Other forms: perusing, perused, peruses
To peruse something is to read it carefully all the way through. Slowly, and with attention.
The word is a genuine trap, because a great many people use it to mean the opposite — to skim or glance over — and that loose sense is now so common that dictionaries record both. Careful writers keep the original meaning of reading thoroughly. Because of the confusion, it is often safest to say read carefully or skim and avoid the ambiguity altogether. The noun is perusal, which appears mainly in formal letters.
1verbperuseTo read something thoroughly and carefully.
“He perused the contract twice before signing.”
Peruse once meant to use up. Anglo-Norman peruser meant to wear out or use through, and the word carried both senses side by side for a long time before only the examining one survived.
Anglo-Norman
peruser — use up
Medieval Latin
perūtor
English, today
peruse
Built from
From either Medieval Latin perūtor, perūsitō (“wear out”) or Anglo-Norman peruser (“use up”), originally leading to two concurrent meanings, but only those derived from "to examine" survive today. by surface analysis, per- + use.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA